Reversal of Fortune

These two beehives are the smallest in the beeyard this year.   They each have an interesting story.

The pink hive is a split from a larger hive [the blue and orange one in the back] that was bearding heavily and just decided to start building comb under the hive boxes.   Bearding is when you get a collection of bees hanging from the front entrance or sides during hot, humid days.  It's normal.

Bearding all night long, and then for days, and then weeks and building comb UNDER the boxes is not normal.   It meant a lot of pissy bees outside and a lot of extra pings for the beekeeper this season.

Eric and I decided enough was enough and we spent a miserable couple of hours removing the bees and their comb from under that hive and putting them in their own box to make themselves a new queen and new colony.    They did not come gently.

Every week for 4 weeks, I put a new comb of brood and eggs from another colony in there for them to make a new queen from.   They finally did.   And then that blasted queen refused to mate.   I checked on them week after week and finally 2 weeks ago decided to just write them off.   I couldn't find the new queen and was tired of stealing brood for them.

The green hive is a swarm we caught this year from our own hives.   It was small.   We put them in the box and they started doing what they do.  The queen was doing great, laying fine, drawing comb, etc.  Only thing was - they weren't storing any honey.   I figured they'd get the hang of it since they were increasing in size.  We are still in a flow.  There's time.

And then I walked out last week in time to see another swarm 30 feet up in a tree, very much out of reach.   Eric and I threw together a swarm trap and waiting.  The next day they came down to the trap but wouldn't go in.   They flew off again.   Then they flew back to it again.   I'd had enough watching and just put them in there.

They didn't act happy.   So I put in a frame of brood from another hive to anchor them until they got happy and then I noticed that that little green hive was awfully quiet.    Sure enough, this new swarm was that old swarm, which had absconded leaving three perfectly good frames of brood.

This is not good.   So I fed them a lot of sugar syrup and waited to see what they'd do.

Reversal of fortune.  I checked both hives today and wouldn't you know they've done a complete reversal.

The pink hive has a laying queen!   She's fat and beautiful and doing a great job.  Multiple frames of brood. They're storing plenty of honey and pollen.  This queen came from my favorite hive.  I'm hoping to see her build up and make it through the winter.

The green hive is languishing.   The queen is there, but laying multiple eggs in a cell, which the bees will take care of, but it's weird.   I put their old comb back in the hive so the could focus on laying and raising brood instead of building comb.   I'm still feeding them a lot of syrup.   I don't expect them to make it to fall, much less through the winter.

It's funny how things change.   In spite of my predictions, the bees will do what they will do.  They don't read the books or pay attention to the experts, or me.   They'll likely surprise me.

July Hives

Here's a view of my expanded bee yard.   We doubled the size so I could put in that extra row of hives.    I'd like to maintain eight to ten hives all the time to get four or five hives through the winter and enough honey for us for a year.   It's an experiment.

That's Clyde, the rusty vulture, guarding the bees.   He makes me laugh.

Beehive and smoker

© Robin Edmundson, 'Beehive, smoker',  18 x 22 inches framed. 

I use a smoker when working the bees.  It keeps them calmer.   This colony has four boxes.  The brood nest is in the bottom 2 boxes and they put the honey in the top boxes.   During a good flow, a colony can fill 4 or 5 of these boxes in a season.   We pull off the extra and harvest it.

I've had so much fun painting these hives!  I think this might be my favorite.   22 x 18 inches, framed.  $350.  All of these original watercolors will be hung and available for purchase at my upcoming show.

August 4-September 29, 2017

The Vault at Gallery Mortgage

121 E 6th St.  Bloomington, Indiana

Opening:  August 4, 2017   5:00 - 8:00 pm.

More Hive Art

© Robin Edmundson, 'Beehives #2', 18 x 22 inches framed.

Once I got started painting the hives, I couldn't stop.  There's more coming!   Here's a different view of my apiary.   I used softer greens and did a ton of editing as I worked it up.   [Always an adventure!]

I learn something every time I put brush to paper.


Framed, 18 x 22 inches.  $350.  Come see it in person at the show.

Hives, Plein Air - redux

© Robin Edmundson, 'Beehives - Plein Air', 18 x 22 inches framed.  

Getting feedback is a powerful thing.   I was showing this piece to my plein air group and someone who was there during the actual painting of the thing mentioned that I hadn't put in the handles on the boxes [See that version in this post].   I had left them out because the piece was so busy anyway, but I thought about her comment a lot and asked the family for more opinions and the feedback was that they'd be better understood as hives if I put in the handles.

So I did.

I like this better.  Do you?


Framed, 18 x 22 inches.  $350.  Come see it in person at the show.

Spring Honey

It's been a busy year in the apiary!  We've done some splits and I caught a swarm all by myself. [Exciting!]  I now have 8 colonies, and all are doing pretty well.   We've expanded the size of the apiary to accommodate our growing numbers and I'm excited to be getting some honey.

This is our spring harvest.   We got 6.5 quarts [very little compared to what commercial beekeepers will get off a single hive].   I'm hoping to get that much more before the end of the season.    The harvest is small because I've been producing a lot of bees instead of honey.

I study beekeeping every single day.  I have learned a lot more this year, but still feel pretty ignorant about beekeeping and bees. I'm still trying to work out what is a good working size for our apiary.  If I can get these colonies through the winter, then next year I should be able to focus on a few hives for big honey production.

In the meantime, there are a lot of stings and sweet rewards.

Bees Update - Late March, Early April

Five alive!   All four of my hives made it through the winter.

The one on the far right lost a queen after the buildup started and I swiped some frames of eggs and larvae from other hives to get them through so they can make their own queen.   The first time they failed to even try, so I did it again a couple of weeks ago and this time I see that they're bringing pollen in so I think they got a clue and are making a new queen.

The pink hive in the middle is a split from the duck hive, which was a nuc I bought from Bedford, Indiana last year.   It lazed all year not doing much, but survived the winter and built up super fast this spring.   Two whole boxes of brood by the end of March, so I split one off.   I'm hoping to get a couple more splits off this hive this year.  The original nuc came from a guy who depends on good breeding stock for treatment free bees.  Always a good thing.

Since I got the bees through the winter, I've realized that I have a whole new set of things to think about - like dealing with mite issues, watching for 2nd year diseases, managing for expansion or honey, treatment or not?, etc.    The treat or not treat issue is a hot topic on the forums.  I found [or rather it found me....] a forum specializing in treatment free bees.   Such a change in perspective!  A new way of thinking about management.  I'll be learning a lot this year.

Spring Bees

I did an inspection last week of all my hives.   They all survived the winter!   I'm a firm believer in the necessity for ventilated quilt boxes in this area.   It's the best way to mitigate the cold and the damp in the hives.  

Hive #1 - queenless.   Lots of drone brood and plenty of new bees, but no eggs or larvae and very little going on at the entrance, when all the other hives were bustling.  Dead giveaway that something was wrong.  That's why I decided to inspect when I did.

I gave this hive a frame of eggs from one hive and a frame of new larvae from a 3rd hive.   I kept this colony at only 1 box.  They're doing fine now and will raise their own queen.  I'll check again if I see something weird going on or in a month, when she should be out and laying.

Hive #2.  Booming!   Gorgeous striped queen.  A box already full of bees.  I put 2 supers on this one.

Hive #3.  Booming!   Gorgeous red queen.  7 frames of bees. 1 super.

Hive #4.  Booming!   Gorgeous blonde queen.  8 frames of bees. 2 supers.

I put the supers on now because we'll be in the spring flow before you know it.   I also gave everyone a jar of 1:1 syrup to get them through the bout of cold and rain we had last week.   When I went out today, they were bringing in tons of pollen and orienting like crazy.    I may actually get some honey this year.

Bee Check In

I checked on the bees this week, while the weather was warm.   All 4 hives are doing fine.

WOOT!!

Here's a pic of the cluster in #4 under the quilt box, eating away at the sugar.  They're really happy!

I have to give credit to Rusty, from HoneybeeSuite, who gave me the idea for the quilt boxes because I really think that's what's making the difference this year [and last].  

Only one of the hives had a moisture issue in the quilt and that was because I had forgotten to put shims between the quilt box and the next lid up.   The cedar chips in that box were pretty wet, as was the denim liner under the chips.

I added the shims and all should be fine now.   The bees inside were doing OK anyway.  This week the weather will be warm and I'll check the chips in a few days to make sure they're drying out.

Maybe I'll start the spring with 4 hives?  
Maybe I'll get a real harvest this year?
Maybe I've figured out the key to overwintering here?

Stay tuned!

Honey Harvest!

It's the time of year when I need to do one last big inspection on the bees so I can combine hives, treat, think, evaluate, etc. before the winter.

I had 6 hives:

#1 The big Mother Hive - Russian x local queen
#2 Bedford nuc lg
#3 Bedford nuc sm - never took off.  Queen problems.
#4 1st swarm from Mother Hive
#5  split from Mother Hive to stop swarming.  [didn't work]
#6  after swarm from #5.   Stayed small [1/2 med box] but nice queen and good laying pattern.

I was delighted to find that #1 had filled me a whole super of honey.   First time for a real honey harvest.   #5 had filled a partial.  In all I had about 1 1/3 medium boxes of honey from the two hives.

We crush and strain by hand.   It took Claire and me about 1 1/2 hours to get it all done and cleaned up.   It's messy.   Seriously, seriously sticky and messy.

Even though the bees have been all over the goldenrod this year, we had plenty of rain and they were late filling the supers, I was amazed at how LIGHT the honey is.   It is sharp tasting like clover honey.   Since the bee yard has been smelling so good and like goldenrod, I expected darker, stronger goldenrod honey.   Huh.  We had a lot of asters, so maybe that was it.

At any rate, I'm very grateful.   I had wondered if I'd ever get a full super from any hive ever.   In all we got 10.75 pints of honey.  [That's 1 1/3 gallons.]

In other hive news:
#3 had gone completely queenless, no brood at all, but they had stored some honey.   I combined it with #6 by taking out the honey and putting it in #6, then putting #6 on top of #3 with newspaper between.   In a week, everyone should be up in #6 and we can pull #3 off the bottom and button them up for the winter.  

I took the extra boxes off everyone else to reduce defensible space.   The nights are chilly now and they're clustering well.  

Now I have 5 hives left.   They look good.   We'll put sugar bricks and quilt boxes over them in the next month or so and probably wrap them in tar paper, too.

Swarm!

Late this morning, I walked outside and heard what I thought was a large engine coming from the neighbors place.   I went back in and then right back out for something and realized the sound was an awful lot like bees, so I headed out to the hives.  

In time to see the biggest orientation flight I'd ever seen outside the Sweetie hive.   Awesome!   I love watching those.  

But it was noisier than usual and then....then...just up a little higher and over about 20 feet, just above a stand of sumac I saw a lot more bee action.

The bees are not supposed to be over there.   And they never are over there in those numbers.

Which meant, of course, something unusual was going on.   Like a swarm.   I looked for a swarm cluster and didn't see one.    Because they had just barely left the mother hive.   As I watched, they started to cluster on two branches of one of the sumacs, about 10 feet high.  

I happened to have walked out at exactly the right moment to catch what was going on.

So, I called Eric, who luckily was between jobs and headed home fast.   In the meantime, I suited up. I noticed that there were two clusters so I prepped boxes for two new hives. [It's common for multiple queens to be in a swarm - the old queen and any extra virgin queens.]  I got the dropcloths, and two buckets and the loppers, thanking heaven the whole time that the clusters were so low.

By the time Eric got home, I was ready.   He suited up and got the ladder and when we got to the clusters, we found that they had joined - and on the lower branch, so that was lucky.

Eric got the ladder ready but because the cluster was over a lot of brush and brambles, we couldn't use the dropcloth, so I put the bucket on my shoulder and stood underneath while Eric cut.   The cluster was so low in the first place that the bottom of it already hung in the bucket.   All he had to do was drop it.   The smell was very strong - a swarming hive smells like lemon grass oil in a big way.   LGO is often used as a swarm lure.   Now I know why.

[New readers may be wondering if I was freaked out having 30,000 stinging pets flying around and all over my head.  Swarms are notoriously noisy but not aggressive.  They're not defending, so they only sting if you grab one wrong.  Mostly they crash into you - and crashing is not the same as stinging or attacking.   Plus, I have a great suit.  It's not totally sting proof, but it helps keep me calm and if the beekeeper is calm, the bees will be calmer.   So, no, I wasn't bothered.  This was not my first bee rodeo. See this post for my first cut out.  After that, nothing fazes me.]

Anyway, Eric dropped the branch in the bucket on my shoulder and I walked it over to the hives, slowly so the flying bees would follow.



I decided to use two boxes because most of the frames already have some comb in them. They won't be slowed down by starting from scratch.   Plus, this queen builds up super fast and I knew they'd be bursting at the seams soon.  I took some frames out of the top box and we gently took the branch out.   This was a 2 person job, so no pics.  

After the branch was in, I shook it off and dropped the bees in the boxes.   They went straight in - a very good sign.  Then we turned the bucket upside down and knocked the rest of the bees out of it into the box.  

Then we put the bucket in front of the hive where the stragglers immediately found the bottom entrance of their new home and went in.   This is very good as it means the queen was in the box and the girls were communicating well.  I replaced the frames and closed it up.

The whole swarm catch took maybe 15 minutes once Eric got home.   Fastest catch in the history of swarms.


This brings us up to 4 hives this year.  

Busy Bees

The bees are busy bringing in loads of pollen.   They started this season as a tiny fist-sized cluster and have built up enough to mostly fill a 10 frame medium.   I added a super last week and they're very happy.  

This hive is part Russian.   I bought a package with a Russian queen last year, but they didn't like her, and within a couple of months had requeened on their own.  This new queen does not like any loitering around the hive.   I got pinged on my cheekbone just for standing and watching near the front of the hive.   Rude.   Since then I've heard that Russians can be defensive.   So we keep an eye on things from a little further back.  

If all the pollen coming in is an indicator, then this hive is building up really fast.   I'm hoping to add another super in a week or so.   The wild brambles are just getting ready to bloom.   Assuming it ever stops raining.

Successful Start to Spring

We took advantage of the glorious weather yesterday and started working for real on our spring To Do list.  

After losing a couple of buckets of sap to an over-curious dog, we still were able to end up with 6 pints of syrup.   Yum!   To see how we boil, check out the links in the sidebar.   It's an all-day and very smoky affair.  We make an event out of it.

While we were outside, I planted some peas, favas, radishes and arugula. It's supposed to be warm and rain for the next 6 days, so the soil should be just right for early peas.

Lily prepped the milk jugs so I could plant the tomatoes, pepper, eggplant, huckleberries, leeks and onions so they can get a head start on the season.   I tucked everyone in a small cold frame with a glass top.

Lily and I also inspected The Bees That Lived.   It's a tiny colony.   1/4 the size of a medium box - about the size of a nuc.   I think the reason they lived is that we had a well ventilated quilt box on them.   They still had a deep full of honey below them, but we're switching to all mediums so I pulled the deep and set it aside and condensed the hive space.   We saw the queen - beautiful!, made sure they had enough honey [plenty in the medium], put a pollen patty on top and some extra sugar blocks.   The brood was a tiny patch the size of your fist in 2 places.   They are slow to build up.  At any rate, now they have less space to defend and plenty of stores.  Let's hope the queen gets her act in gear and starts cranking out eggs.

I had set an unused quilt box on a stack of empty mediums and covered it up completely for the winter.  When we opened it, it was completely saturated with moisture and molding like crazy, even though it was filled with cedar and over an unheated stack of supers.   Good to know!   These quilt boxes are great - as long as they are ventilated!  I used regular construction shims/wedges to prop up one end of the inner cover I put over the quilt box on the bees.   Must have been just right because I didn't see any moisture or mold over the bees.

Lily and I took our first pings of the season.   That deep of honey I set aside started a bout of robbing.  My girls were pretty defensive and while we were taking care of things, I got pinged on the arm and neck and Lily took one on the ear.   I had to wet blanket the hive and that took care of it.  The rain the rest of the week should dampen any pillagers' spirit and leave my hive to build up - I hope. 

Afternoon update:  I checked the girls this afternoon.   All quiet on the apian front.   Thank heaven.

Flying!

A beautiful day today and the bees were out flying!  *heaves sigh of relief*

My pink hive [the last remaining one from last year] is doing well enough.  I opened the top and the cluster is not very big, but it is very vigorous.  And kind of defensive.  They have plenty of sugar left and I put a pollen patty in to help get them geared up for the season.   I see buds on the silver maple.  It won't be too many weeks before the early spring flow starts.   

I over wintered this hive with a vented quilt box.   Here's how it went from top to bottom:

• telescoping cover
• inner cover with notch down and open to quilt box.
• 3 inch quilt box shim with screened bottom full of cedar shavings AND construction shim/wedges on top on one end for good ventilation between it and the inner cover.   That tilted the lids a bit, but no problem.
• 2 inch shim for winter sugar
• medium super with honey
• deep super with brood
• solid bottom board with lower entrance only

I wrapped the whole thing in some left over tar paper [we're using that for the floors in the house remodel] and then stacked some very large bags of leaves around the hive to block the wind.

The combination of things seems to have worked.   It was not a large hive in the fall, but they were interesting and hard working.   This is the hive that requeened with 27 emergency queen cells in August.   I tried to do splits but almost every split absconded back home with the honey stores, which they put back in the mother hive in a super I had set on the hive ABOVE an inner cover that completely separated it from the brood box below.   I had been trying to reduce the space for the remaining part of the colony left from the splits since we were in the thick of robbing season.   Apparently they didn't want things that way.   I recombined everyone and prayed a lot.  

I hope this bodes well for my beekeeping this year.  I have a good feeling about these girls.   I'm hoping to get a lot of honey out of them this year.  And a nuc with these behaviors would be awesome. 

In a few weeks, I'll reverse the boxes, putting the cluster and brood, which is now in the top box, on the bottom and I'll add a medium super above.   We're switching out to only mediums from now on.

Another Hive Down

I checked the hives on Wednesday when the sun was out and the temps near 50.  The pink hive was actively housecleaning and doing cleansing flights but the other was silent.    I waited a few hours because the smaller hive often takes a bit more coaxing to break cluster and come out, but never saw a single bee. 

So.   The next day I waited until it was warm again and lifted the lid on the quiet hive for a quick look and found a completely silent hive.   I lifted some of the candy I'd put in during the fall and found the dead cluster up high, tucked right under the food source, barely fist sized.   They didn't make it through the couple nights of 0 degrees early last week.  Just not enough bees.

It's very discouraging.    That's 3 out of 4 hives down this year. 

I put some tar paper around the pink hive, checked the quilt box for good ventilation and tucked another giant bag of leaves up next to the bottom of the hive on the east.   It has excellent wind block on the west and north, with sun exposure to the east and south.   Assuming the sun shines again, that will help.    However, it's going to get near 0 again for the next couple of days.   Let's hope these ladies are tough enough to make it.  

Winter Bees

No pic for you today because the bees are under a bit of snow, but we saw them flying earlier this week so fingers crossed they'll make it the rest of the winter.

Since hope springs eternal around here, Eric and I went to a class yesterday on Queen Rearing and Nuc* Overwintering in the Michael Palmer style.   It was really interesting.  We hope these bees make it through and we can grow the yard a bit this year for real.   I ordered 2 more nucs from the instructor, who raises local genetics and doesn't treat.   They're more expensive than ever this year [$175 each] but the local, disease resistant bees would be worth it if I can grow the yard.  

We took the class at Stuart Ratcliff's apiary in Bedford, Indiana.   He's on facebook:  Ratcliff Beekeeping.    He taught us all about grafting and raising queens and then overwintering the nucs.   Grafting doesn't interest me much, but there are graft free ways of making your own queens and I'll be trying some of those this year if we come out of the winter with live hives. 

In class, Stuart asked us what our goals for the yard are and I realized that I've been so focused on getting the bees through the winter that I hadn't really thought about anything beyond March.  So we've all been talking about it.  This will be our 5th year with bees.   If these hives make it, then we'll grow them for honey.  We'll be converting the long hive into nuc spaces - a quadruplex with a window in the back.   The screened bottom will have to be replaced with a solid bottom.  We'll have to make tiny inner covers for each section and tighten up the dividers between nucs.   It's likely we'll cut it down to a medium, but we can always put mediums in a deep and not the other way around.  

This is one of the problems with having to buy nucs [and typical starter kits that have those discounts on equipment].   Nucs are deeps and perpetuate the need for at least some deep boxes in the yard. Starter kits almost always have 2 deeps per hive.    We'd really like to go to all mediums.   I think we'll be able to do that eventually by only using deeps for the very bottom boxes, when we have to.  If we use mediums for all of the rest of the boxes, then in the spring when it's time to reverse the boxes, we'll have a medium on the bottom, can take the deep away [cut it down or save it] and can use mediums only on that hive from there on out.  

There are a lot of options for us.   We'll see what the rest of the winter brings.  

* For definitions of many bee terms, see my bee page tab above.

Robbing

I told you in my last post that I had combined two hives and in the process started a lot of robbing.  And these robbers were relentless. 

It's normal to see a lot of action in the front of the hives and around the entrances.  

It is NOT normal to see action all around a hive, under the hive, around the back, with bees trying to get in the seams, and bees fighting and dropping off the hive in clusters.   That's robbing behavior. 

The robbers will strip all the stores from a hive in no time flat and kill an entire hive as well.  I knew that the worst of the robbers were other honeybees, joined with a few yellow jackets and some giant bumblebees.  I just didn't know if the bees were from one of my other hives or from a feral hive or a neighbor's hive.

First rule of robbing:  Stop It Now!

What to do?   There are several options:

• robber screens
• wet blanket over entire hive
• set out feeder 100-200 yds away from the hives to lure robbers away
• close up hives completely
• open up all hives so that robbers go back home to defend
• something even more drastic if you can think of it.

I had already put robber screens on the hives as soon as we had our first hard frost and the winter dearth started. They didn't seem to be making much difference.

I put out a feeder but that had minimal effect.

I tried wet blankets and that didn't work.  The robbers went under.

I didn't want to open all the hives, because it looked like all the hives were getting robbed and that meant the robbers were mostly likely coming from another area and not my bees robbing each other.

The guys on Beemaster bee forums said to do something even more drastic, so I turned the hose on the bee yard and hosed all the hives down.

It worked.

Then I suited up completely including gloves and screened off all three hives. 

The next morning, the hives were covered with bees again and I knew for sure they were coming from outside my yard.   I left the hives completely closed with screens for a couple of days until the robbers didn't come back, and then I took the screens off late one evening so my bees could have a bathroom break and get back in without having to worry about robbing.   Robbers go home at dusk.  

Note:  Bees HATE flashlights, so if you go out and must use a flashlight around the hives, make sure you suit up completely.   I was paranoid and insisted we suit up, and boy, were we glad we did.

A couple weeks later, I put sugar and quilt boxes on all the hives.  I reduced the combined hive to a single box as fast as I could and using hive cloths to keep things covered as I worked.  By the time I was done another robbing frenzy had started and I got the hose out and took care of it.

This time the robbing was mostly centered on the combined hive, so I closed that hive up completely with screens and left the other two alone with their robber screens on. 

If there are robbers in a hive when you close it up, within three days, they either fight to the death or are forced to join the hive. If there are a lot of robbers and they join the hive, you've effectively increased the size of that hive, which would be a good thing in my case.    So I left it closed for three days.  

Things are calm now.   All hives have robber screens, extra sugar and quilt boxes on for the winter.

Let's hope they'll make it through til spring.

Fall Bees

It was a busy fall around the bee yard the past couple of months.   Two of the hives decided to requeen in late August - one of the Russians and one of the nucs.   

The Russian hive produced 27 queen cells, which we tried to make nucs with and failed, but the cell we left in the hive produced a fabulous queen and that hive is doing very nicely now.   We're overwintering it in two boxes.  

The other Russian hive is doing fine and will winter in a single box.  

The nuc with the new queen never got very big and so I decided to combine it with what had been a much stronger hive.  Unfortunately, the combine was slow because you have to find one of the queens to take her out.   I had decided to keep the new queen and it took for freaking ever to find the other.   By the time I finished the combine, there was wholesale robbing.   By the time I got the robbing under control, there were not enough stores to warrant two boxes over the winter, so I reduced them down to a single box.   Which started more robbing, which I'll talk about in the next post. 

At any rate, I'm going into winter with 3 hives this year.   I am hopeful that the two Russian hives will do OK.   The other hive is very different in demeanor and I'd be thrilled if they made it through at all, but I confess I won't be surprised if they don't. 

Thai Basil

I planted some Thai basil this year because I had gotten some seed I-don't-know-why and I generally plant whatever I have seed for. 

It's a small and very sweet smelling basil.   And it blooms like crazy.   All. Summer. Long.   

We think it's OK, but prefer the Genovese style basil.

The bees, on the other hand,  love it.   Love. It.

I'll be planting rows and rows of it again just for them.  

Busy Bees

A quick look at our very busy beehives.    Blow the pic up for a better look at how many bees there were.   It's goldenrod flow time and the bee yard smells very strongly of goldenrod honey. 

Not much honey overall this year, but lots of bees.   Each colony needs lots of bees in the fall cluster to keep things warm until spring.  Every time I open a box and see it full of bees instead of just a few frames of bees, I am very, very happy. 

The hive with the yellow super seems to have quite a bit of honey in it.   Maybe the long hive with the orange super, too.  They get to keep their honey this year.    I'll take the empty supers off the hives next month and put candy on the hives..   That way everyone has plenty of feed for the winter.   Just in case.